I'm okay with being a lusty, virtuous heretic. But playing violent games does not mean I'm violent.

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Very Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Low
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

We had an earthquake last night. No, really-- someone in class mentioned that it was apparently measured at 4.9, and someone else pointed out that Georgia's on a fault line, a fact I did not know. At 5:01am I was awoken by my bed shaking and the walls rumbling. I rubbed my eyes, swore at the neighbors for being noisy, got up to use the bathroom and then went back to bed. There were several people in class who slept through the thing. This one obviously wasn't severe, but since my room is on the highest (fourth) floor of the building the possibility of worse ones in the future makes me a little nervous. I need to find out if earthquakes are covered in my homeowner's insurance.

Oh yeah, and I learned today that I really suck at badminton. I used to be so good...

At the insistence of my friends at work, I spoke to my boss yesterday about becoming a supervisor. I hadn't really thought about it until they suggested it, but since I work hard and am one of the few people there who actually enjoys the job to some extent, they figured I'd be good working on the next level up. As a supervisor one gets a 25% raise, a considerable increase in responcibility and a slight increase in workload. When I asked my boss what steps I should take towards becoming a supervisor, she smiled and said that since I'm already doing an excellent job I simply need to keep doing what I'm doing, and that when Katie, one of the current supervisors, leaves this fall, she would definitely consider me for the position. She even thanked me for mentioning my interest. Typing it out makes it sound like she was just paying me lip, but I'm actually pretty confident that she'll give me the position. It's satisfying to know that the effort I put into my job has been noticed and will pay off (and the raise will come in handy too of course). I wish everyone else felt the same way about the job. It really irritates me how so many people show up late, do a shitty job, mess with the computers, constantly bitch and moan... It seems like very few people take pride in their work. Hopefully when I'm a supervisor I can allieviate them of their misery by booting them out the door.

A dream last night:
It was some kind of class field trip, I think, that I went on with several friends from both here at UGA and from my high school. There were probably only a dozen of us in all. We were visting an underwater plant. Early in the morning we gathered on the pier to meet our guide and a ferry pulled up nearby. The back door opened and guards emerged, before the start of a line of convicts. Each convict was wearing a dark red jumpsuit, had his hands chained to his waist and was linked to the man behind him by about two more feet of chain. Some of them had white cloths tied over their faces. They all looked miserable, as though they were going to their executions. Suddenly the guard knocked the first convict towards the edge of the boat and he fell in, the force roughly yanking the men behind him into the water as well. We stared in horror, and the flustered guide mentioned that those men did the labor in the plant and that was how they got there. All of us were stunned; a few were close to tears. The chain was probably seventy men long or so, and after it vanished into the water our guide jumped in and told us to follow him. We all jumped overboard and began to swim down effortlessly for miles and miles. I could see the chain of men sinking ahead of us and had to cover my mouth so as not to cry.

Once we reached the ship and made it inside, the convicts were already at work and most were out of sight. We went through the boiler room, where some of them were working, and then had free reign to explore the rest of the plant. It had long, twisting tunnels built with white cement bricks and several exposed pipes overhead (much like my dorm room Freshman year, now that I think about it). Still a little disturbed by the sight of the men being pushed off the ship, we broke into twos and threes and began to explore. Someone, possibly my friend Jenn from high school, was clinging to me in fear that the plant would somehow spring a leak. "There's no point in worrying about it," I told her. "We're so far below the surface that if we sprung a leak, the pressure from the water would kill us instantly. You'd never know it was coming." Unfortunately, this didn't seem to console her very much. Soon after I said this the lights began to flicker in the corridor we were in and somewhere an alarm began to sound. Terrified, we began to run through the corridors, trying to find our guide and shouting for our friends. We heard someone shout for us to come and found about half the group sitting in a small, sparse den, holding only a sofa on one wall and a wide-screen TV across the room. There was no room to sit, so we stood in the doorway watching the TV, even while the lights began to flicker more rapidly, going out for longer periods of time, and the plant began to shake. It was a breaking news report complete with shaky video from the scene and a hurried reporter's narration. Somewhere in Paris a man had sat down in the middle of the street. People were slowly being drawn to him, flocking to him in droves, sitting around him in concentric circles and shouting his name, loving and praising him. The tape showed him sitting as peacefully as a Buddha in the middle of the chaos. He was surrounded by pairs of twins, all hollering his name in unison; I thought of Noah and the ark. Life in the city and much of the rest of the world had broken down. Everyone was flocking to this man, however way they could manage to do it. If they were not by him, they were going to perish. He was humanity's new saviour and the world was coming to an end. All of us watched, enthralled, even as the plant began to crumble about us.

After that last post, I stretched out on my little sofa to read and promptly fell asleep for two hours, so now I'm wired and disoriented. Ever since the Paris/London trip I've been able to, regardless of my location and level of fatigue, spontaneously konk out for catnaps-- either by choice or mistake. It was necessary for survival on the trip (you think I'm kidding but I'm not) and it's found strange applications for itself since I've been home.

What the hell was I going to talk about? Right-- summer plans. Here is my schedule as it currently stands:

6 May, 7-10p: Final exam for Lit
7 May: Devil came up to North Carolina
8 May, 8:30a: Blood work and CT scan at the clinic
9 May, 8:30a: Review results of my tests with my doctor
10 or 11 May: Devil came back down to Georgia
12-23 May, 1-4p: Intro to Creative Writing Maymester class
24 May: 9-hour drive to Sarasota to stay with Mom and Grandma
28 or 29 May: 4.5-hour drive to Jacksonville to descend upon Manna and Holly like a plague of love-locusts
31 May: Go to JACON, spend the night at P-chan's
1 June: Return to Jacksonville
2 or 3 June?: Wander my way home, alone and sad but also tanned and hyper and content.

The only thing I'm worried about right now is my car surviving the trip, but I plan to get it thoroughly checked out before I leave and also to take frequent breaks on the road. Work shifts will have to fit into this plan as well, though I'm not sure exactly how. Ah well, it'll all work out one way or another.

Williams Syndrome: This was mentioned in the book I'm reading and I thought it was pretty fascinating.

My new C&H books came in. I now own:

Books:
Calvin and Hobbes
Something Under the Bed is Drooling
Yukon Ho!
Weidos from Another Planet
The Revenge of the Baby-Sat
Scientific Progress Goes "Boink"
Attack of the Deranged Killer Mutant Monster Snow Goons
The Days Are Just Packed
Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat
There's Treasure Everywhere
It's A Magical World
The Calvin and Hobbes Lazy Sunday Book
The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book

My money situation is tight again, but if I ever get a little extra money I might look into getting the ones I don't have.

Tonight was the reunion party of sorts for the group of us who went on the Paris/London trip. Almost everyone showed up, including pretty much all the people Matt and I were looking forward to seeing again. We caught up on each other's lives since the trip, had a barbecue, looked through each other's photo albums and had an overall great time. I guess going through something that monumental with a group of strangers becomes an excellent bonding experience.

While Matt and I were at the supermarket, I popped two quarters into one of the cheap vending machines by the doors-- you know the type-- and scored this:


I named him Mini-Bling. He completes me. (Matt was right, though: for me, a ¢ would be more accurate.)

I had my first fender-bender today, although it wasn't a serious one. The officer even opted to give me a warning instead of a ticket. There was no damage to either of our cars and the man said he was fine, although he asked to have a report filed anyway; "You know, just in case something comes up later." I'm taking this to mean that in a while he is going to spontaneously develop whiplash and sue me. I wish I could say I'd been doing something silly and dangerous to cause the accident and deserve the hell I'm going to get from my dad for this, but I'm not even that fortunate.

That's enough whining, though, because I'm actually pretty cheerful. My summer plans have changed again, and for the much better. Instead of coming right home after visiting my family in Sarasota for a few days, I'm going to drive to Jacksonville to see Manna and Holly, go with them to JACON at the end of the month, and then come back to Athens. This is shaping up to be an excellent Summer.

I've discovered that being stapled into an uncomfortable chair in an ugly classroom for 100 minutes twice a week (i.e. going to class) provides an excellent opportunity to work on my stories, although they're still very slow in coming. I've been able to churn out a typed page of writing per class for the last while, and while I care a lot about writing, I know I would work much harder at it if I had a deadline. I'm really looking forward to the Maymester writing class for this reason. It looks like I'm going to finish the semester on the 6th, duck into NC for my next x-ray/CT scan, come home for Maymester, then drive down to Sarasota to visit my mom and grandmother afterwards. This will all be finished around early June, so I'll still have two months or so of Summer to work, work, work and make pennies, pennies, pennies.

On the way home from class this afternoon I got to pet a neighboorhood cat that I hadn't seen before, and I've been smiling ever since. An article in the student paper earlier in the week said that only about a third of the 1100 or so animals brought into the city's shelters each year are adopted, the rest being euthanized. I think I might be adopting an older cat very soon.

I am pink and glowing from the sun, my hands smell like grass and I'm wearing new underwear: this has been a very good weekend. Today Matt and I went to the Botanical Gardens where we had lunch, walked around and laid in the glass for a while, then moseyed about Wal-Mart before I went to work. Last week was my first week working five shfts, and I've found that it's tedious but not difficult. In the past few days I've won auctions for four Calvin & Hobbes collections that I didn't have, which-- assuming they all arrive safely (which Matt's birthday present did not, goddammit)-- will bring my total to nine. So far I've been able to get most of them for $7-$8 including shipping. There are still three or so that I don't own, though, so if you have any C&H's lying around that you'd like to sell, by all means post a comment. Now I think I'm going to take a cool shower and sit outside and read for a while.

To my credit I did go out to dinner with Matt and his friend earlier tonight, but I've felt so worn out and melancholy all day that afterwards I opted to go home and chill by myself. It's 10:30 on Friday night and I'm sitting in my room, drinking Screwdrivers and typing on the computer, and all I can think about is the fact that twenty-one years of events, of experiences, of life, have led me to be, at this very moment, here, doing this.

Don't laugh, because at this very moment, all the years of your life have led you to be sitting at a computer and reading this, too.

Happy birthday, crotchblog! Today (or yesterday, technically: April 10th) marks the second birthday of this hoarde of electronic nonsense, "Your Feet in My Crotch is Not A Pleasant Thing." On April 10, 2001:

I was 19. -
I did not have my own house. -
Cancer meant nothing to me. -
I was a freshman dreaming of a life doing studio art. -
My grandfather was still alive. -
Matt and I were just friends. -
People had no reason to talk about terrorism. -
I hadn't become friends with some of the coolest people I've ever known. -

Also, amusingly enough, I was the only person I knew who had an electronic journal. There are plenty more things, including all of the important ones that are impossible to describe in simple little blurbs. I've been reading through the archives and it's a little comforting to see that I've obviously grown-- to what extent, though, I can't really say. I'm a very different person in some ways and exactly the same in a few others. But maybe it'll always be that way. Hopefully it won't.

Where will I be on April 10th, 2004? Who will I be, and what will I be doing?

The present is the beginning of the past.

There hasn't been too much going on lately, hence my general quiet. Spring has more or less sprung here and everyone is shedding their layers like onions. I spent most of the weekend with Matt and also had my first Sunday shift at work, which was uneventful. My mom called today and told me that our cat, Shadow, who is thirteen this year, was just diagnosed with some kind of heart failure and probably doesn't have long. My mother and grandmother just moved from DC to Pensacola, Florida about a month or so ago, and I was intending to drive down and visit them from the end of the semester (May 6th) to the beginning of Maymester (May 12th). It'll be nice to see them and spend a little time on the beach, and hopefully I'll be in time to see Shadow. Last night I dreamt that a cat-sized tarantula was terrorizing a crowd of people and me in the Asheville Mall and unfortunately we were all locked inside. I spent most of the dream shaking hysterically and pleading that no one try to hunt the spider because they would be killed; they never listened, though, and they always died. Guess I didn't try hard enough.

Matt pointed this out to me. Hope you laugh as much as I did: US soldiers in Iraq asked to pray for Bush

For his next performance, Bush will solicit donations from the poor.

According to the LA Times, it's now risen to 4 out of 5 people thinking that Iraq has ties to Osama bin Laden.

Wow.

I need to start by saying that, as a journal-reader, I hate sifting through "people r stoopid" posts just as much as the next guy.

Unfortunately, this is going to be one of those posts.

The Flagpole (Athens' local paper) quoted a recent national poll which said that 51% of Americans believe Saddam Hussein is responsible for 9/11-- and furthermore they believe it's the reason we're now at war with Iraq. The only problem is, naturally, that all of that is make-believe. Apparently no one remembers-- or decided to forget-- Al Qaeda accepting responsibility for the attacks soon afterward, and, you know, all that stuff called evidence. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. At the start of the anti-Iraq campaign the Bush administration insisted that Iraq was supportive of Al Qaeda, but Bush has never stated that Hussein had any hand in 9/11, and he has never stated that we are attacking Iraq because of it. So there's no need to bust out the paranoia or wild theories; to hell with slapping at the insideous probing fingers of a Big Brother government or frothing at the mouth over our cerebrum-melting television-centered culture-- this is the American people fabricating theories to appease themselves.

WHAT ON EARTH IS WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY?

This has nothing to do with the war; the war has just made it too painfully and glaringly obvious to continue ignoring. It's about us. I'm consistently ashamed for and shocked by the American people. I'm ashamed to be American. I'm so tired of feeling like this, and I still try so hard to be optimistic and focus on the redeeming aspects of our culture, but with this general lunacy growing with every passing day, it's only getting worse. We have completely imploded into ourselves. This is absolute rock bottom. Out of my self-respect and my integrity, though, I refuse to retreat into the convenience of ignorance and complacency which has over the years somehow become the vogue. I am also still too optimistic to stop believing that we're capable of being a better nation and a better people than this.

"Let he without sin cast the first stone"-- well, I'm not perfect, I'm not smart and I'm generally not even well-informed. I don't consider myself to be a model American; I'm sunk just as deep into this oil spill of a country as anyone else. And my ideas and opinions certainly aren't holy or infallible. I'm not preaching from some higher plane, I'm simply making an effort to avoid slipping to an even lower one. I owe it to myself not to. We all do. And I hope we realize that before it's too late.

A slew of unrelated things:

The Ultimate IQ Test: Matt just sent this to me and it's a fun way to kill half an hour. I scored 136 and it told me that I am a "visual mathematician," whatever that means. How'd you do?

Still very jetlagged from the trip-- waking up at 6:30 and passing out around 10, which is about six hours off of my pre-trip cycle. Today was my first day back in class in two weeks but I didn't miss much. Afterwards I submitted my application for the Maymester creative writing class(!) and took a nap on the grass in front of Park Hall (the English building). Spring is here, which means that everyone is shedding their layers like onions. Hard to believe we only have a month left of classes before break.

At work yesterday I signed up for another shift, bringing the total to five a week (20 hours). I'm now working every day that I don't have class. Although it's pretty tedious and the wages aren't fantastic, I've made some great friends there I and always leave in a good mood. I'm hoping I can snag a better job over the summer (but who isn't?).

While rooting through my closet for things to sell in order to pay for my speeding ticket I found four of my Calvin and Hobbes anthologies-- The Essential, The Days are Just Packed, Attack of the Deranged Killer Mutant Monster Snow Goons and the Tenth Anniversary Book-- which I got in late elementary school, if I remember right. Reading through them all now I've discovered that not only are they still really funny, but a great many of them are also very insightful, an aspect I didn't understand or completely missed when I read them back then. If the other books are cheap enough these days, I might pick them up.

Interesting article: New theory links older brothers to male homosexuality. If it's true, which seems entirely possible, it seems so simple that it's kind of hard to believe no one noticed it sooner.

That's all for now! I will leave you with a C&H strip that seems fitting for all us journal-keepers.